Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb!

So, there wasn't another space trial. I guess that's an improvement with today's viewing? Not by much, though. I do feel like I missed out on an obvious virus sickness / Monoid / mononucleosis joke yesterday, and that saddens me heartily. As for how tedious The Ark is, here's some fun trivia for you: 1) Actor Peter Purves (Steven) thought the Monoids looked ridiculous, what with them basically being dudes wearing Beatles wigs to cover their eyes and then holding a ping pong ball in their mouth to be the singular eye. 2) Director Michael Imison also didn't like the story. 3) Probably not coincidentally, just before filming for this story Michael Imison was told that his contract as a BBC director was not going to be renewed. Is it any wonder that The Ark is such a disappointment?

In the back half of the story, it is 700 years later and the Monoids have taken over the Ark and subjugated the humans as slaves. The Monoids now have a special collar they wear that has a voice box to speak for them, what with it being difficult for the actors to speak with ping pong balls in their mouths. Also, there are multiple scenes of Monoids being served food and drink by their human slaves, and scenes of the Monoids placing empty cups or gnawed-up chicken bones on the serving trays, but the camera goes to great lengths to never show how they actually consume their food. Again, one presumes that it is difficult for the actors to eat with ping pong balls in their mouths.

The Monoid leader has decided that once they reach the new home world, he is going to blow up all of the humans with a neutron bomb he has hidden in a giant statue on the Ark. There is much going back and forth between the Ark and the planet, there is the inevitable human uprising, and for the second time this season the special effects team decided to just make a new alien race invisible instead of spending money creating another rubber suit. So yeah, the intelligent inhabitants of Refusis are magical beings of pure thought with no physical presence, except when the effects team makes a point of having seat cushions be compressed by said invisible non-corporeal when they sit down with their non-existent bodies. So, um... huh?

In the end the evil Monoids are defeated, because of course they are, and the humans colonize their new planet with a new commitment to work in peace with the surviving non-evil Monoids, in order to build a utopia with their new invisible besties.

So, than goodness that ridiculousness is over and I can get on with The Celestial Toymaker, which at least promises to be bonkers.